Mike Passarini

“Why Socialism?” added to the Reformist Bibliography

Albert Einstein’s seminal 1949 essay, originally published in Monthly Review, is now accessible in PDF form via the bibliography. The piece, far from being an empty call to revolution or a milquetoast defense of welfare capitalism in the guise of a nominal “socialism,” is one of the most sober and concise defenses of democratic socialism ever written. In relatively few words, the German physicist puts forth an unsparing indictment of capitalism and argues in favor of the need for social and economic transformation.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of [man’s suffering.] We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

His conclusion, in favor of a planned economy, additionally confronts the dilemma of preventing tyranny.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate [society’s] grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals….Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Einstein’s essay offers both a solid explanation of socialism’s basic utility while avoiding any overly didactic prescriptions for its realization. Einstein ends his piece with a call for discourse. Seven decades on, the left is bogged down in unproductive and frequently bad faith discourse. A revisiting of pieces like Why Socialism? more often could break the logjam.

Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear

The expressions of relief at the immanent end of 2020 are disturbingly indicative of a widespread shortsightedness. The sentiment is typically motivated by an overwhelming catharsis triggered by the symbolic closing of a catastrophic and traumatic period, the Sisyphean expectation that COVID-19 vaccines will return the world to “normal” within the year or a mixture of both.

During the 2008 riots in Greece, “Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear” was a phrase frequently rendered in graffiti (a photo of it later went viral.) This sarcastic proclamation could hardly be better suited to the present moment. 2021 presents tremendous uncertainty and threat. The pandemic, currently at its most severe thus far in terms of both caseloads and deaths, will potentially worsen in the New Year. Anthony Fauci, quite optimistically, predicted that “normality” in the U.S. could return by fall of 2021. This would be heavily reliant on the timely implementation of vaccinations and continued mitigation efforts. As it stands, vaccinations in the U.S. are woefully behind schedule and even the simplest social distancing measures continue to be politicized and met with resistance.

The incoming Biden-Harris administration promises little more than milquetoast centrism. Biden himself insinuated he would veto Medicare for All legislation and his platform is mostly comprised of weak incrementalist policies with a few ambitious outliers like his college tuition subsidy plan along with his stated intent to bring supply chains back to the U.S. The degree to which he will actually pursue any of these measures (and the degree to which he would actually succeed) is anyone’s guess.

The catastrophe of 2020 presents, of course, a vast opportunity for leftist political reform and progress. COVID-19 has shone a floodlight on the savage inequality present in modern society. The private sector was no hero in the fight against the virus. Frequently, it was responsible and served as the justification for extreme negligence, re: resistance to much needed business closures, premature reopenings and widespread price gouging (all with disastrous results). Containment of the virus cannot be a green light for a simple return to the oblivious consumerism and recklessness of the pre-COVID-19 era. When a deadly airborne virus is no longer an omnipresent threat, widespread political mobilization is imperative.

2021 can be a continuation of the horrors of 2020 or the beginning of a paradigm shift of historic proportions. Whether it is the former or the latter will be determined by decisions made by the citizenry, carried out through civil society institutions and political organizations. In 1930, Antonio Gramsci wrote “that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” We are experiencing “morbid symptoms” in the most literal sense. We can, however, be midwives to the birth of the new if we choose to be.

“The Cause of Labour is the Hope of the World”

An 1894 engraving by English artist Walter Crane.

SocDem bibliography update: “The Minority Party in America” featuring Norman Thomas

In 1960, a producer from Folkways Records (now Smithsonian Folkways) interviewed then leader of the Socialist Party of America and six time presidential candidate Norman Thomas, releasing the interview the following year under the title The Minority Party in America. Beyond the subject of the title, Thomas discusses a range of topics and issues (many of which are still relevant) including campaign finance and the odious role of the public relations industry in politics. Thomas’s forthrightness, pragmatism and commitment to egalitarian democracy shine through. He makes clear that his pragmatism, however, is not just a cover for unprincipled opportunism. “Politics is, in a sense, the art of compromise, but it’s the art of compromise of people who have a sense of direction, who know where they’re going and who don’t compromise too easily without a fight,” he says. The interview is both rich with Thomas’s insights and a snapshot of American cold war politics from a leftist perspective.

The record can be streamed in its entirety on YouTube and downloaded from the Folkways website along with the original liner notes.

Moral Wreckage: Murray Bookchin on Anti-Democratic Leftism

As conflict rages over “cancel culture,” identity politics and use of violence in the contemporary left, this Burlington, VT public access TV interview from 1986 with legendary anarchist Murray Bookchin remains shockingly relevant. When it was recorded, comrades were widely accusing each other of being “CIA agents.” Fast forward to the last few years and that accusation has simply been replaced with “cop.” For the left to regain any real power in the US, a lot of self interrogation is required. This assessment by a veteran member of the old left of its immoral tactics is an integral part of that self-critique and a segue into making a similar criticism of underhanded behavior engaged in by the modern left.

SocDem bibliography update: “From Socialism to Neoliberalism”

Bayard Rustin c. 1970. (Photo: Associated Press)

In 2013, American Marxist Edmund Berger published excerpts from an abandoned writing project on his blog. The two posts, titled “From Socialism to Neoliberalism: A Story of Capture,” chronicle the downfall of the Socialist Party of America and the ideological drift of seminal figures like Bayard Rustin from democratic socialism to anti-Communist hawkishness. It’s essential reading regarding the downfall of the American left.

Parts 1 and 2 are now included in the bibliography.

Paris Marx’s latest: The Necessity of Public Housing

In another piece written for Passage, Paris Marx describes how private homeownership forces home buyers to conform to and prioritize the logic of the market, viewing a home less as a stable dwelling and more “an investment that’s meant to generate wealth.” He also points out the role of condominiums in giving the wealthy who live in dense urban settings the option to buy rather than rent, reducing the profitability of the rental market. Marx is unambiguous in his advocacy of mass investment in public housing that is “not subject to market forces” as the solution to the housing issues plaguing Toronto (which apply as much to almost any other large North American city.)

“This government promotion of home ownership across much of the Western world changed the culture of our societies. As author Grace Blakeley describes in Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation, home ownership makes people more invested in the capitalist system as they build wealth through the ownership of an asset — even though the vast majority of the benefits continue to accrue to the wealthy.”

Three articles from the latest issue of Passage

These three pieces from the current issue of left-wing Canadian publication Passage deal with problems that are both longstanding and dramatically contemporary: Aaron Giovannone on the leveraging of unemployment against workers, Kieran Delamont on the need to resist a return to pre-COVID-19 style consumerism, and Paris Marx on the necessity of a move away from atomized private spaces and towards publicly owned commons.

Here are some choice excerpts:

High unemployment rates mean employers can take their pick of the glut of applicants, offering them lower wages. Poor unemployment benefits make workers more desperate to take a job, and to keep the one they have. And frightened and vulnerable workers provide weak resistance to management’s demands to intensify their workload.
Aaron Giovannone

After three months in our homes, the pressure to consume in a certain way feels less necessary. While general pandemic experiences have differed depending on the country and region, the effect COVID-19 has had on consumer culture has been one of few trends felt on a supranational scale. With this in mind, we should commit to a version of economic recovery that looks like how we’ve been living and buying during quarantine — slower and more considered and ethical. Instead of rushing ourselves back into the fluorescent, corporate dynamic we left behind, we should build something closer to home.
Kieran Delamont

This shift toward private car use and suburban, single-family homes also helped change people’s character. In 1973, journalist and philosopher André Gorz described how the car was inherently a luxury good whose benefits cannot be democratizing because there simply isn’t enough space in a city for everyone to have one. He compared it to a seaside villa — not everyone can own one, so the beach must be a communal space. Gorz argued that mass automobility was ‘an absolute triumph of bourgeois ideology on the level of daily life,’ making everyone believe ‘the illusion that each individual can seek his or her own benefit at the expense of everyone else.’ This is undeniably linked to the mass consumption that also arose in the postwar period, when all of a sudden there were a ton of consumer goods for people to fill their new suburban homes.
Paris Marx

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SocDem bibliography update: Four Jacobin articles

Today, the bibliography gets the addition of four Jacobin articles, published in 2018/2019, all addressing the strengths (and weaknesses) of social democracy.

Three Scandinavians (Andreas Møller Mulvad, Rune Møller Stahl and Kjell Östberg) chronicle the halcyon era of Swedish social democracy (and its failure to transition into democratic socialism) and highlight Denmark’s welfare state as a refutation of superficial American anti-left talking points. Jacobin staff writer Meagan Day continues the Scandinavian theme, arguing that the fetishization of the Danish concept of Hygge ignores the political realities of its country of origin. In a later article, Day challenges the notion that the U.S. possesses a welfare state of any real substance, instead relying on “an elaborate system of tax expenditures intended to facilitate private welfare provision.”

Collectively, the articles offer important insight into the much vaunted social democracies of Scandinavia and, with Day’s second piece, how that form of welfare statism has utterly failed to materialize in the United States.